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“These technologies, which create value by improving productivity across the value chain, could potentially contribute $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in annual value across the four sectors. Two-thirds of this potential value lies in improving collaboration and communication within and across enterprises.”

While the first day of Tiny Startup Camp was all about fundamentals, the second day was about execution, actually making something. And as we were launching the test beds for our very own tiny startups, the room was filled with the sounds of keyboards, excitement, confusion, answers, and awesome. We were executing on Jason Glaspey’s 15-step plan and getting our hands dirty. Proverbial dirty. There was lots of Purell.

Three bad brothers you know so well said it best, “Now here’s a little story I got to tell.”

“To create something out of nothing, you have to convince other people to join you when you have nothing.”

“All startups start tiny.”

“Build confidence with metrics. Measure growth from day one.”

“Relationships are salient and super relevant for tiny startups.”

4:50 pm | It’s pitch time. Six tiny startupers pitch their tiny startup. Awesome shoots from their mouths as they ptich their tiny startups in 3 minutes or less. Rick Turoczy of Silicon Florist is there to write them up (his write-up will be included once it’s published).
5:19 pm | Jason closes the first Tiny Startup Camp. We sing Kum Ba Yah.

Final words: I got through 12 of Jason’s 15 steps and am only a few hours-ish away from launching my first tiny startup. A lot of tiny startupers got much further. For me, this was a great experience. In addition to a solid ROI, I learned a lot about things – both concepts and tactical execution – I wasn’t familiar or comfortable with before. And I met some amazingly amazing and talented people. Based on the excitement, inspiration, and execution I saw, I’m sure you will see some highly successful tiny startups hitting the Portland scene really, really soon. Well, that is if you have the very, very specific problem they are solving.

My pay back period was less than one hour and my ROI was I don’t know, I’m on my phone, you do the math.

And, personally, my return goes way beyond that, like the fact that I’m on my way to launching my first tiny startup, met amazingly bright and talented people, and was part of the first Tiny Startup Camp. And if what I learned and my passion for solving the right problem for the right people leads to a successful, revenue producing tiny startup, then BOOM! More return.

Disclaimer: Sure, I didn’t include my time and made some assumptions, but this is my business case, so there.

Overall, the first day of Tiny Startup Camp was a solid introduction to the fundamentals. In addition to the key concepts, there were a lot of tips, tricks, and resources presented. I realize I don’t dig into the details of those, but hey, you’ll get all of that when you attend Tiny Startup Camp 2.0. Personally, today alone was worth the price of admission ($50). Sure, some of this stuff I already know, but it was great to hear validated approaches as well as save countless hours on the Google machine trying to figure out the stuff I don’t.

“Information products are the fastest, easiest way to make money. You can do it in a week.”

“There are three formulas for information-based businesses: coaching, ebooks, and memberships sites.”

“Define your very specific audience and talk to them. What is this their biggest problem? What is the solution? Have you looked for a solution? Record and write down, so you can hear their exact words. And they can be used to market your tiny startup.”

“Only worry about Google & Bing. That pretty much covers every major search engine.”

“Optimize for the different phases of the buying cycle: research, evaluation, & buying.”

“When building a keyword list, use your brain – what would you search by, use Google’s keyword finder, just start typing into Google, and check out Amazon – the next largest search engine after the big ones.”

“The most important thing in SEO is website format, specifically the title tag.”

“Provide killer content better than your competitors.”

3:31 pm | Rick Turoczy gets all up in social media’s grill:

“Don’t expect to get more out than you put in.”

“Land grab and speculate real estate, but live where your customer lives.”

“Be clear about what your social presence does and doesn’t do.”

“Be polite. Be thankful. Share.”

3:58 pm Jason tells us we are all going to fail, but it’s a good thing. And gives us an overview of the next day, where we execute on what we learned today.
4:01 pm | Breakout sessions with Kim, Rory, & Rick.
4:02 pm | Rory answers questions and points us to some great resources.
4:36 pm | I sneak out before the social hour because I’m socially awkward.
Tomorrow | We execute on what we learned today. And I’ll be testing my first tiny startup.

Already awesome Vizify has gotten more awesome. They’ve added personal analytics, so you can see the number of visitors and page views as well as clicks on your Vizify email signature. They’ve also added the ability to add a background image (like this). You can pull from their gallery, Facebook, Instagram, or your personal collection of squirrel images.

If you don’t know about Vizify, you poor soul… but you can read a little about it here and here.